


Why The Sterlings Don't Take Family Vacations

by MaryPSue



Series: Return, Rewind, Rewrite [8]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Transcendence, Body Horror, Gen, Original Character(s), Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-16
Updated: 2016-10-16
Packaged: 2018-08-22 16:29:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8292424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaryPSue/pseuds/MaryPSue
Summary: The Sterling family's trip to the beach was supposed to be nice. Quiet. Normal.
Unfortunately for the Sterlings, 'normal' is relative when one of your relatives is a demon in disguise.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Followup fic to Return, Rewind, Rewrite, based on an idea by transcendence-au‘s creator and Mod Z ( [zilleniose-chu](zilleniose-chu.tumblr.com) )! Thanks to Zoey for waiting patiently for over a year between telling me ‘hey I had this really cool idea’ and giving me basically an entire outline, and actually seeing a finished product. Thanks to [seiya234](seiya234.tumblr.com) as usual for her beta services, and for her help in establishing the setting and the Sterlings' home!
> 
> Big warning for body horror in this one.
> 
> Happy Anniversary, TAU!

“Come on, Dip, this is going to be so much fun!”

“Fun. Yeah. Fun – Belle, do you even remember what happened the last time we went on a fun family summer vacation? You nearly got murdered by a cult and I turned into a demon.” Dipper paused to think, half-heartedly tossing a pair of shorts into his open suitcase, and added, “Well, okay, not so much ‘turned into a demon’ as ‘found out I was one all along and got all my memories and powers back’, but that’s not as catchy. Aaaaand you weren’t listening to a word I just said, were you.”

Belle only grinned and gave a twirl, showing off the new bathing suit that, Dipper had to admit, was pretty cute. “I wonder if I could knit a sarong to go with this,” she said, still grinning, as she set her camera on her bed beside bottles of shampoo, conditioner, bug spray, and sunscreen. “And I was totally listening. Blah blah blah, vacations are awful, I’m Dipper and I hate fun.” 

“What? I am not like that! And I had a perfectly valid point!”

Belle flashed a smug grin into the teeth of Dipper’s unimpressed glower. “Cheer up, geronibro! It’s ten days of sun, sand, and surf. What could possibly go wrong?”

“Do you want the short list or the long one?” Dipper crossed his arms over his chest. “Because the long one starts with ‘you get your suitcase full of sand mites and they overrun our house’ and goes all the way up to ‘there’s a hugely territorial demon sleeping in a local volcano and my arrival wakes it up and triggers the apocalypse’.”

“Aw, sand mites sound adorable!”

“They’re microscopic.”

“Adorable,” Belle repeated firmly, with all the solemnity of a judge passing sentence. “Now. Should I bring the yellow rhinestone flip-flops, or the purple zebra ones?”

“And the short list just says ‘everything’, Belle! Everything could possibly go wrong!”

Belle sighed, and put the sandals down. “Dipper, I _know_ that. But everything could go wrong anywhere, any time. You can’t just not do things because something could go wrong. Besides, I just got this bathing suit and I have been dying for a chance to wear it.” 

She took a step back, surveying the sandals. “Oh! I know, I’ll bring both!”

...

It was nearly a ten-hour drive from Ann Arbor to Sandy Hook and their hotel. They left early, Belle yawning exaggeratedly every few minutes and Dipper shuffling like a zombie, occasionally running into large objects he really should have seen. He'd offered to just pop them there probably seventeen hundred times since Lionel had first told them about his idea for a family vacation, but every single time, Lionel had said no. Oh, it would definitely cut down on their travel time, but he'd booked the hotel anticipating two days for travel, and besides, wasn't the point of this vacation to spend time as a family? And after all, after what had happened in Gravity Falls last year, they could all use a quiet, nice, normal family vacation.

So Dipper was slouched in the backseat of the little blue hatchback, buckled in beside Belle, who was loudly popping her gum every other second as she snapped photos - out the window, of Waffles the teacup griffin, of the back of Lionel's head, of Dipper when she thought he was asleep. Dipper hadn’t really paid much attention when she’d leaned over and carefully ruffled his hair; he’d been looking out the window, watching to see if he could catch a glimpse of the New York City skyline. He realised his mistake when something landed with a soft heaviness on top of his head, tiny claws prickling at his scalp as Waffles excitedly searched his overgrown brown curls for the griffin treat Belle had perched on his head.

“Belle!” Dipper complained, as Belle snapped a picture. He reached up to remove the offending griffin from his head, only for Waffles to nip curiously at his fingers. Belle took picture after picture, the flash leaving bright shadows all along the edges of Dipper’s vision. “Come on, seriously?”

“You two are soooo cute!” Belle giggled, raising the camera again. Waffles skidded forward along Dipper’s head, tiny claws clamping down hard and drawing an ‘ouch’ from Dipper as his little, wide-eyed griffin face peered, upside down, into Dipper’s. 

“Belle, I think I’m bleeding,” Dipper protested. Waffles let out a warbling coo, fluttering his wings with a rustle of feathers, and pecked Dipper once, gently, in the middle of his forehead. “Would you please get him off of me?”

Belle only popped her gum, hiding a smile, and snapped another picture.

Dipper crossed his arms, glared up at the griffin on his head, and lit the top of his head on fire. Waffles gave an indignant screech, taking to the air in a flurry of singed feathers and injured pride, and flew over to nestle into Belle’s lap. Dipper looked up, triumphant, only to meet his father’s eyes in the rearview mirror.

“Dipper,” Lionel sighed, and Dipper slouched down in his seat. He remembered just in time to extinguish the flames before the smell of scorched synthetics grew too strong. A quick snap of his fingers took care of the melted patch on the seat cushion behind his head.

“Sorry,” Dipper muttered, turning back to lean his forehead against the window.

Lionel let out a breath, turning a fond smile on the rearview mirror. "It'll be nice to take a family vacation where that's the least weird thing that happens, don't you think?"

Belle blew an enormous raspberry. "Come on, Dad, this is us you're talking about." Waffles gave an agreeing coo, nestling his head against the crook of her shoulder. "If nothing weird happens, I'll dye my hair bright purple!" She tapped her bottom lip thoughtfully, glancing out the window. "Actually, maybe I'll dye my hair bright purple anyway. Doesn't it look nice on her?"

Lionel shook his head, with a smile. "So much for our nice, normal family vacation."

Dipper slouched down in his seat, reaching into his backpack for a book.

...

The sun rose early the first morning. So did Belle. Dipper was woken by the entire bed heaving like a boat on heavy seas, his sister joyfully bouncing at the foot with her gryphon circling her head and warbling delightedly. When she saw Dipper sit up, rubbing crusted sleep from one eye, she thumped down to sit crosslegged facing him, grinning like a jack-o’-melon and holding his swim trunks in the air. “Goooood morning, brother mine! The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and _you_  are sleeping away the first day of our vacation!”

“Ugh. Belle, what time is it?” Dipper asked, squinting against the bright light streaming through the curtains that his sister must have thrown open because they had _definitely been closed last night._

“Seven o’clock!” Belle chirped, before turning to peer at the glowing hologram display that had shot up out of the clock on the bedside table at Dipper’s words. “Okay, six forty-seven. Close enough.”

“ _What?_  Belle, that’s still nighttime!”

“No it isn’t, silly, can’t you see the sun?” Belle threw Dipper’s trunks at him, only for them to flop uselessly down halfway across the comforter. She bounced a few times more on the foot of the bed, jolting Dipper further awake, her smile so wide it had to start hurting soon. “Come on, bro-bro! We’re wasting daylight!”

Despite Belle's best efforts, they didn’t end up getting down to the beach until just past nine, much to Belle’s disappointment, which she voiced loudly - and constantly. 

"Two whole hours!" she protested, standing scowling with her arms crossed and one toe tapping impatiently as Dipper changed into his swimsuit in one of the little tents set up along the beach. Waffles, perched on her shoulder, gave a low, agreeing hoot. "We could have had two whole hours more to swim and sunbathe and build sandcastles and poke jellyfish with sticks, but nooooo, _someone_ would rather sleep in!"

"Belle, we're here for an entire ten days," Dipper said, watching her silhouette against the tent's candy-striped walls.

"Two of those days were for travel, Dipper! We're already down a day! And I don't know about you, but I don't wanna waste a single second that I could be stuffing my face with boardwalk food or belly-flopping into a wave!"

"Calm down, I'm almost done," Dipper sighed, fiddling with the waist of his swimsuit for a moment before giving up and stepping outside, throwing his arms out to his sides like a showman stepping out from behind a curtain onto a stage. "Okay! Ready for the beach."

The expression on Belle's face was indescribable.

"You are not wearing that," she said, matter-of-factly, grabbing Dipper by the shoulders and spinning him back around to face the tent, shoving him back towards it hard enough that his heels left trails in the sand. "What happened to your swim trunks? They were cute! Well, okay, not stupid-looking!"

"What's wrong with my swimsuit?" Dipper protested, holding back a smile at the choked noise Belle let out. 

"What's -" Belle shook her head, and then yelled, "Daaaaad! Dipper's being weird again!"

Lionel Sterling poked his head out of a tent a few steps further down the beach, a curious frown on his face. "Belle, what -" His eyes widened at the sight of Dipper, and he adjusted his glasses, eyes still wide. "Dipper, is that... How on Earth - oh. Right." He cleared his throat, looking down at Dipper's swimsuit rather than meeting his eyes. "Is that from the nineteen-thirties?"

Dipper crossed his arms over the red-and-white striped fabric covering his chest. "Uh, the twenties, I think." He tugged at the bathing suit's straps, suddenly wondering if having his chest exposed wouldn’t feel less uncomfortable. “Bathing suits actually got smaller over the last couple hundred years, okay? I didn’t think that was even possible!”

“Dipper, it’s all right,” Lionel said, raising an eyebrow at Dipper’s outburst. “I’m not trying to insult your choice of bathing suit. I was just...surprised.”

“Yeah, I know.” Dipper forced himself to unclench his fingers from the bathing suit’s fabric. He looked down at his small, pale, human toes, and curled them into the sand. It crunched satisfyingly under his feet. 

“Well, I _am_  trying to insult your bathing suit! I can’t be seen with you like this, Dipper. I’m sorry. I have a reputation to uphold,” Belle said, pressing one hand to her chest with grave seriousness, before breaking into a huge smile and leaning one arm on Dipper’s shoulder. “Hah! But seriously. If you have to be Mister Fancypants, why not wear, like, a tuxedo t-shirt with your trunks instead of a circus tent?”

Dipper blinked. “That...actually isn’t the worst idea you’ve ever had.”

“I know, I’m a genius,” Belle said breezily, inspecting her fingernails with a smug grin before shoving Dipper towards the tent again. “Last one in the water’s a dork standing alone on the beach!"

She raced off towards the water, Waffles letting out a screech as he took to the air and followed her, leaving Dipper and Lionel alone. 

Dipper broke the silence first, but not with words. A snap of his fingers, a whoosh of displaced air, and the red-and-white-striped suit was replaced by his black swim trunks and a black t-shirt, printed with a stylised tuxedo shirt. Dipper blinked down at the one-eyed gold star with spread batwings that took the place where a bow tie should have been. He hadn't meant for that to be there.

Lionel shook his head, his eyes also on the star. "Are you sure you want to do that out in pub-"

"Yes," Dipper said shortly. "I think Belle's trying to make friends with a jellyfish, I should go and - go."

"Dipper." Lionel said, and Dipper stopped halfway through turning towards the shoreline. The little flicker of indignation was abruptly smothered at the sight of the worry on his father's face.

"I'll be careful," Dipper sighed, feeling a little like he'd just swallowed a gallon of seawater.

Lionel smiled, though it looked a little worn at the edges. "I'm sorry. It's just - I trust you, but I'm still your father. I have to worry about you. It's my job."

Dipper managed a smile back. "Yeah, I know." He glanced over towards the waves, where Belle was just visible waving one arm above the surf. "Last one in the water's a dork standing alone on the beach."

... 

They ate lunch on the boardwalk, looking out over the bay and the lighthouse that guarded it as they munched on corn dogs and oversized stuffed pretzels.

“That’s the oldest working lighthouse in the country,” Lionel pointed out between bites. “It’s been in operation since before the Transcendence.”

“Mmmph,” Belle said, through a mouthful of corn dog. Waffles pecked at curiously at the boards of the boardwalk by her feet, hunting for fallen crumbs, and Belle reached down with what she clearly thought was enormous stealth and dropped a chunk of her corn dog for him.

Dipper leaned his elbows against the boardwalk railing, holding his maple bacon-stuffed pretzel with both hands. If he held it up just so, he could see the lighthouse through one of the loops. “Do you know when it was built?” As soon as he asked the question, the information was there, nudging politely at the back of his mind, but he shoved it away. This was a quiet, normal family vacation. He could be normal.

(He hadn’t been able to make the one-eyed star on his t-shirt go away.)

“Mm. The seventeen-hundreds, I think,” Lionel said, and Belle’s mouth fell open, a chunk of half-chewed corn dog visible for a moment before she shut her mouth and swallowed.

“How is it still _here_?!”

Lionel took a long sip from his lemonade before he answered. “Well, a lot of people over the years have worked hard to protect it and pay for its upkeep, and of course, it’s been a priority since they used it as the cornerstone of the protection they cast on the base -"

Belle's gasp cut him off. Dipper's hands clenched around his pretzel, the soft bread crumbling in his grip before he realised it had been a gasp of delight. "Ohmigosh what is that? I neeeeeeed one!"

Dipper followed Belle's line of sight along the boardwalk, and groaned. "Seriously? Belle, those carnival prizes are all cheap junk, you don't need..." He squinted in the direction of the massive stuffed toy Belle had apparently set her sights on. "Whatever that is."

Belle stuck her tongue out in Dipper's direction. "You are such a - Dad! Please please pleeeeease can I go play the games?"

“Mm, I don’t know,” Lionel said, with another sip of his lemonade. “Your brother has a point. How long are you going to love that stuffed thing for?”

“For _ever_ ,” Belle declared, thumping the stick of her corn dog emphatically against the railing.

“More like for two days after we get home,” Dipper said, opening his hand and sighing when bits of thoroughly pulverised pretzel fell out. Waffles, down at his feet, let out an excited cry and fluttered over to snap up the crumbs as Belle shot him a dirty look.

“You’re just bitter because of that time you spent your entire allowance on that test-your-strength game and never won once.”

“Hey, that game was rigged! Which, by the way, every game on this boardwalk will be. There’s nearly no chance you’d even win that thing.”

Belle looked over at the stuffed...creature again, and Dipper stuffed down a groan as a calculating gleam filled her eyes.

"Noooooo," she said, after a thoughtful silence. "No, Dipper's right, as usual. Nobody can beat those games, they're all rigged. Nobody's smart enough to figure out how to beat them."

"I know what you're doing," Dipper said flatly. Belle fluttered her eyelashes and gave him a gleaming smile. "It's not going to work."

"What, do you think I'm trying to get you to win that for me? Nuh uh. You couldn't even beat that strength test."

Dipper narrowed his eyes. Belle blinked guilelessly back at him.

"Okay, fine," he said, moving to roll his sleeves up before he remembered he was only wearing a t-shirt. "Watch and learn."

...

“Well, I’ve learned a whole bunch of ways not to win at carnival games,” Belle said, leaning her chin against her open palms and her elbows against the counter.

Dipper ignored her, hefting the ball in his hand and scanning the row of open-mouthed ducks he was aiming at. “I don’t get it. Grunkle Stan’s tricks always worked before. What’s going on?”

“How long ago did - uh - Grunkle Stan show you those tricks?” Belle asked, rolling her head back and forth so that her chin rested in first one, then the other of her hands, her hair flipping from side to side with the movement.

“I - okay, but even with magitech, they’re still pretty simple cheats that should usually work. I just don’t understand how -”

"Why don't I try?" Belle asked, and Dipper shook his head, trying to calculate in his head the distance he'd need the ball to travel to lose enough energy that it wouldn't bounce back out of the duck's mouth.

"Just one more time. I think I've almost got it." He wound up, biting his tongue in concentration, and threw.

The ball spun - upwards. Dipper felt his jaw drop as the ball pinged off the metal pole holding up the colourful awning directly above his head, ricocheted off the counter, bounced off of the plush stomach of the stuffed toy Belle had been coveting, and whizzed past Dipper's ear and into the crowd along the boardwalk behind them. Through his frozen horror, he heard a female voice shout 'Augh! My eye!', and winced.

Belle giggled. "Put a little too much oomph into that one, huh?"

"That's - that can't -" Dipper clutched at his head. "None of that was physically possible! How -"

"Dipdops, you break the laws of physical possibility, like, every five minutes." Belle kicked her feet (she'd chosen, Dipper noticed, to wear the purple zebra flip-flops) and elbowed him in the ribs. "Push over and let me try!"

Wordlessly, Dipper stepped aside. Belle bounded up to the counter, extending a hand without taking her eyes off of the row of open-mouthed ducks. The lanky teenager attending the booth yawned and pressed a ball into Belle's outstretched hand, and a huge grin split Belle's face before she reached back and threw the ball.

It flew fast and straight as a bullet, and thumped into the duck's mouth with a satisfying thwack.

"What?" Dipper complained, as Belle let out a squeal of delight and grabbed the teenager manning the booth by the shoulder. "Oh, come on, seriously?"

"Hand over the stuffed...platy-frog-asaur!" Belle shouted, as the teenager clapped their hands over their ears. 

"How did you do that?" Dipper asked, as the teenager worked their way free of Belle's grip and grudgingly unhooked one of the stuffed toys from the roof of the stall. Belle let of a shriek of joy when they passed it to her, squeezing it hard around the middle.

"I'm just naturally lucky, I guess. Or maybe this little guy wanted to come home with me! Huh, little guy?" She gave the toy another squeeze, making it nod.

"Belle, that thing is half as tall as you are."

"Still a little guy," Belle said, with a note of finality in her voice.

"...okay," Dipper said.

Belle reached out and grabbed his wrist. "Oh, come on, grumbly-guts. Let's go try another game. You can't lose at all of them!"

"Haha. Yeah." Dipper worked his arm out of Belle's grip. "Actually, I'm kind of done with games for right now. Wanna go check out the rides?"

"Wellllllll..." Belle winked. "Duh, of course I do! Come on, I think there's a Tilt-a-Squirrel over there!"

She turned and dashed off in the direction of the ride, leaving Dipper to trail after her at his own pace. He glanced back once at the game booth, debating for a moment before he blinked, looking at the aura around it rather than its physical presence. Nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary about it. 

He shrugged, turning and running to catch up with Belle. Behind them, the lighthouse beam swept out across the bay.

...

“- and for Thursday, an eighty-nine percent chance of showers in the afternoon, building to thundershowers later in the evening. Skies should be clearing for the weekend, though, with temperatures rising to a high of -”

“ _Whyyyyyyyyy_  are you watching the _weather_ ,” Belle groaned, flopping back across the bed to lie flat on her back and drape her head, upside down, over the edge. She paused a moment to make kissy faces at Waffles, who was glaring and growling steadily at the giant stuffed creature she'd won and which she was hugging, before continuing her complaint. “We’re supposed to be on _vacation_.”

“That’s exactly why I’m watching the weather,” Lionel said, not taking his eyes from the screen. “You don’t want to get caught in the rain in the middle of a day at the beach, do you?”

“Nooooooo,” Belle grudgingly moaned, sweeping her hair from side to side before flipping it up to cover her face. “But doesn’t vacation mean _not_  doing boring stuff? And I’m hungry. Dipper, you’re hungry, right?”

“A little,” Dipper admitted. “But Dad’s right, and the weather report is only like five minutes long.”

“At least I’ve managed to instill an appreciation for the importance of planning ahead in one of my children,” Lionel said, with a wink in Dipper’s direction. Belle bounced upright, pointing an accusing finger at Lionel.

“ _You_  said your big life plan was to become a rockstar!”

“Don’t you think that’s just a tiny bit different than checking to see if it’s gonna rain in the next eight days?” Dipper asked.

Belle threw the stuffed creature at him.

Dipper caught it, laughing, and threw it back. The toy hit Belle in the shoulder, and she scowled in Dipper’s direction before slowly and menacingly raising the stuffed toy again.

“Oh, you asked for it, mister,” she said, as Dipper reached over to pull all of the pillows towards himself before she could grab any. “You’re going dow- hey! Oh, no _fair_! Now you've got all the ammo!” 

“Now you appreciate the value of planning ahead, huh?” Dipper said, and Belle glared at him for a moment, and then threw herself flat on her face across the pile of pillows he’d amassed. “Seriously? Belle, get off.”

A muffled “Never!” rose from the pile of pillows, somewhere in the vicinity of Belle’s face.

Lionel raised a hand, his eyes not leaving the television. “Kids. Quiet for just a moment, please.”

Dipper glanced up at the screen, leaving Belle to sweep armfuls of pillows toward herself. The image had switched from the smiling meteorologist to a swirling satellite image in unnatural colours, and as the swirl slid up across the screen, the meteorologist’s voice spoke in the background. “- tracking north along the East Coast. This low-pressure area has been upgraded to a tropical storm, and if current conditions continue, it is expected to pass by New York on Thursday before turning towards Greenland. Watch for heavy rains and high winds, with a chance of severe weather overnight.”

“Now aren’t you glad we watched the weather?” Lionel asked, with a note of triumph in his voice.

Belle didn’t even look up as she flung the stuffed creature at him. 

Waffles, apparently strained past his tiny gryphon limits, launched himself after it like a bullet. Belle's shriek of "WAFFLES, NO!" went unheard under the gryphon's warbling war-cries and the tearing of claws and tiny beak into soft felt. Stuffing rained down around them like perversely out-of-season snow.

Belle managed a sheepish smile in her father's direction as the fluff slowly settled, reaching out to grab her pet. "Hah...hah, guess somebody's a little jealous?"

Lionel blew a puff of stuffing off his upper lip, looking at the gryphon with a flat stare. "Before we go anywhere for dinner, we're going to go see if the hotel offers petsitting."

...

It took nearly half an hour to decide where to go for dinner. Lionel was insistent that they should have fresh seafood while they were on the coast, while Belle complained that her father wanted her to eat innocent sea life and was probably killing a mermaid's pet. Dipper interjected at that point to explain that there were no mermaid shoals this close to the coast, and that most of their cities were in the deeper ocean, with a few embassies closer to shore, which meant that it was actually more likely that Belle was eating one of their pets if she ate canned tuna.

Lionel had started to rub the space between his eyebrows like he was getting a headache at that point, so Dipper stopped. His explanation had done its job, though, since Belle, with a look of stunned horror on her face, agreed to go with them to a fish-and-chips stand on the boardwalk.

The sun was just starting to think about setting, long, warm shadows pouring across the boardwalk as people passed. Dipper munched a handful of fries, pretending not to see Belle stealing a few from his plate as he looked out across the water. The colours from the sunset were spectacular, the sun sinking into the sea in a fiery haze, the undersides of the handful of lamblike clouds hovering near the horizon gilded and flush with royal purples and deep, bright pinks. The low, reddish light spilled over the fronts of all the buildings along the boardwalk, lit up the lighthouse like a pillar of gold, lent fiery haloes to the people walking by - 

Dipper blinked. That wasn’t the sunlight. 

He looked at the people passing along the boardwalk again, actually seeing them this time. A rainbow of colours surrounded each one, most rosy and warm with contentment, a few with bright spots of anger or anxiety and some dulled with despondence, but all, definitely and unmistakeably, auras.

Dipper blinked a few times, concentrating, and the auras vanished. He peered out at the passing crowd for a few seconds longer, trying to see if he could spot what had made his vision shift, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

Dipper gave a mental shrug and went back to his fries. He’d just popped one in his mouth when Belle elbowed him in the ribs and hissed, “Why’d you do the eye thing?”

“Eye thing?”

Belle held up both hands, making circles with her thumbs and forefingers and pressing them over her face like spectacles. “Eye thing. Like you did when the Flock crashed dodgeball that one time. Or when Mr. Gardner turned out to be a lich. Or that time in Gravity Falls -”

Dipper thought he’d done a pretty good job of hiding the flinch, but Belle’s eyes widened anyway, and she clapped both hands over her mouth. “ _Sorry_ ,” she hissed, through her fingers.

"What? Nothing's wrong, nothing's -" Dipper shot a quick glance at their father, who was looking quizzically at him and Belle. "Nothing's wrong."

Both Belle and their father were looking at Dipper strangely now, and he tugged at the collar of his T-shirt. "What? Is there - is there something on my face?"

Belle shook her head, slowly, not taking her eyes from Dipper's face. She held up her hands with forefingers and thumbs in circles again, holding them up to her eyes.

"Oh no," Dipper groaned, pressing his palms against his eyes and desperately willing them to go back to normal. After a few slow, hopefully calming breaths, he lowered his hands, glancing over at Belle. She nodded, and shot him a thumbs-up, before stealing another of Dipper's fries.

...

Dipper woke up to a steady _thump-thump-thump_. He cracked an eye open to see Belle, sitting on the end of the bed and bouncing up and down, apparently trying to see how high she could go on each bounce.

"Finally!" she shouted when Dipper sat up, yawning as hard as he could and feeling like the top of his head was trying to come off at the jaw. "Get up, sleepyhead! We let you sleep in a whole thirty-two minutes!"

" 'We'?" Dipper asked, just as their father poked his head out of the bathroom, toothbrush sticking out of his mouth. "Aw, man, did everybody get up before me?"

"Sure did!" Belle chirped. "Get your clothes on and fix your eyes, we've got a big day ahead of us!"

"My..." Dipper brought both hands up to his face, looking past Belle to the huge mirror above the desk on the opposite wall. "Oh no." He blinked several times, trying to make his eyes settle back into Dipper Sterling's usual brown, but they remained stubbornly gold and black. "No no no no no..."

"Dipper?" Lionel asked, and Dipper forced a panicked smile to his face.

"Yep! I'll just be a couple minutes."

Lionel looked skeptical, but he stuck his head back into the bathroom. As soon as Dipper heard the scratching of a toothbrush, he leaned in to hiss in Belle's ear. "Belle. I can't change them back!"

"What?"

"My eyes!" Dipper gestured furiously at his head, trying again to will his eyes back to normal, with no results.

Belle giggled, then took a long look at Dipper's face and stopped, the smile slowly sliding off her face. "Wait, seriously?"

" _Yes_!" Dipper pressed a hand to his forehead, grabbing a handful of his hair. "You gotta help me, I can't go outside like this...I can’t let _Dad_  see me like this...!"

“What? Dad’s not going to care if you’ve got a little demon-eye going on.”

“Belle are you kidding? You heard him! This is supposed to be a nice, _normal_ family vacation!” 

Belle sat still for a moment, pressing her lips together like there was something she wanted to say but couldn’t think of how - or whether - to say it. Finally, she let out a long sigh and shook her head.

"Never fear, bro-bro. Belle Sterling is on the case!" Belle slipped off the bed, kneeling beside her suitcase and flipping it open. She rummaged through it for a few seconds, colourful articles of clothing flying out over her shoulders before she pulled out something hot pink. "Aha!"

"Are those -" Dipper started, but was cut off when Belle jammed the sunglasses onto his face. "Great. Now my eyes are stuck all creepy, and I look like a huge dork."

"No more of a dork than usual!" Belle said brightly, flopping into the bed beside Dipper and throwing an arm around his shoulders before turning an enormous grin on their reflections in the mirror. Dipper had to admit, the sunglasses did do a good job of hiding his eyes, though hot pink really wasn't his colour.

"Yeah, I guess not." He managed a smile in his sister's direction. "Thanks, Belle."

"No problemo!" Belle slid off the bed, but not before giving Dipper a quick sock in the arm. "Now hurry up and get dressed! We've got vacationing to do!"

...

The beach was less busy than it had been the day before, a small mercy that Dipper was desperately grateful for as they set up their towels and the umbrella. He felt like the hot pink of his sunglasses was glowing like a brand on his face, drawing everyone's attention to what he was trying to hide.

It made no sense for him not to be able to turn his eyes back! This hadn't ever happened to him before! Except for that first summer after -

Dipper shook his head, shaking the memory off as well. This was different. He'd had centuries to get used to his powers, and he'd kept up a near-perfect human disguise for thirteen whole years, he wasn't going to suddenly lose control now. Though, an uneasy thought interjected, he hadn't known that he was even in disguise for those thirteen years. Maybe now that he knew what he really was -

"Hey, Count Dipula, stop moping over there and come swim with me!" Belle waved from the surf, bouncing from one foot to the other. "Water's f-f-fine! Not cold at all!"

Dipper sighed, and pushed himself up out of the shade of the umbrella. "Why do I not believe you?"

"Oh, don't be such a stick-in-the-" Belle started, but she cut herself off mid-word with a shriek, running back up the beach toward Dipper and Lionel, who put his book down on his towel as she came running. 

Dipper couldn't help a laugh. "Oh, sure, not cold at all."

"It wasn't the water!" Belle grabbed Dipper's shoulders, aiming him at a patch of ocean that didn't look any different than the rest. "Look!"

At first, Dipper didn't see anything worth looking at, just the slate-grey and marbled white of the choppy sea extending out to the edges of the world. He was just about to ask Belle what he was supposed to be looking for when a lapping wave rose up and, silhouetted against the sunlight, Dipper could make out the shapes of what had driven Belle out of the water. "Jellyfish?"

"I don't know! There's all kinds of things swimming that way!" Belle pointed down the beach, towards the lighthouse. "Where did they all come from? There weren't any fish at all yesterday!"

"Calm down, it can't be that many -" Dipper paused, looking out over the waves, listening to shouts from all along the beach as people started scrambling out of the water. Fins and glittering leaping fish and even a few massive tentacles, thicker around than Dipper was tall, breached the slaty waves as they rushed in the direction of the lighthouse. "...what the heck?"

Lionel opened his mouth, but Dipper didn't hear the words that came out. A headache had hit him with slow, blooming force, so quiet and creeping that he hadn't realised it was coming up on him until the pressure in his head had grown so great that his ears were ringing.

It was strange. It felt like the headaches he used to get in the presence of strong magic, back before he knew he was Alcor and was still stuck in a restrictive human form designed to suppress and contain. The world blinked in and out of colour with each throb in his skull, auras flickering in and out of sight, kaleidoscope images that belonged to neither waking world nor mindscape obscuring his vision, and the sand underfoot seemed to flow and drain like the inside of an hourglass. He hadn't felt like this since crossing the barrier into Gravity Falls - 

There was a feeling like his ears popping, but somewhere in his brain, and suddenly the mounting pressure vanished. Dipper carefully turned his head from side to side, but everything stayed in full colour, uninterrupted by mindscape greys or the bruises of auras, the sand as steady as sand can be under his feet.

Out in the water, the single-minded migration ground to a confused halt, the multitudes of marine life slowly breaking up into pods and shoals and schools, drifting in the aimless-looking way Dipper had come to expect from fish instead of the steady determined rush towards the lighthouse. He did notice, glancing out across the waves, that none of them seemed inclined to stray back out into the open ocean, instead hugging tight to the shore around the lighthouse.

Belle's shoulders slumped, and Dipper could tell that she'd come to the same conclusion he had. "Awww, and I was really looking forward to swimming today too!" She pouted for a moment in the direction of the water, before taking a deep breath in and squaring her shoulders, planting both hands firmly on her hips. "Ah well, it was too cold anyway. Augh! Dipper! What did you do to my sunglasses?"

"What -" Dipper raised a hand to his face, but his fingers found the plastic frames just the same as they had earlier that morning. He pulled them off, still puzzled, and immediately saw what had caused Belle's outburst.

"You melted the lenses right out!" Belle wailed, and Dipper felt himself shrink, trying to hide behind his own shoulders. Luckily, the other beachgoers seemed to be too preoccupied with the fishy phenomenon taking place around them to pay much attention to a preteen girl yelling about sunglasses. "Ohmigosh, those were my favourite pair, too!"

"Belle, you wear glasses."

“I might get contacts someday,” Belle said, with a pointed look in their father’s direction. Lionel sighed.

“Belle, now is not the time.”

“Look, I’m really sorry,” Dipper said, heading off the fight he could see brewing as best he could. “I didn’t mean to melt your sunglasses, but I’ve got slightly more pressing problems than trying to convince Dad to buy you contact lenses.” He gestured in the general area of his face, and Belle visibly winced.

The words had barely left Dipper’s mouth, though, before Lionel reached up to take his own sunglasses from their perch atop his head, holding them out to Dipper. “You can borrow mine if you need a pair.”

Dipper hesitated a moment, before reaching out and taking the glasses. They were a little too big for his face, sliding down his nose just a fraction of an inch every time he took a breath, but he slid them on with a little relieved sigh nonetheless.

Out in the water, a massive tentacle shot up to wrap around the base of the lighthouse, hauling an octopus the size of a tanker truck up after it.

...

"Are you feeling all right?"

Dipper nearly jumped out of his skin - possibly literally - when his father touched his elbow. "What? Haha, absolutely! I'm totally fine, just having so much fun on this family vacation, little tired out from this morning, haha, I should just take a nap!"

"Dipper."

"I didn't mean to, okay? I don't know what's happening!" Dipper took a deep breath, letting it out in a long gust. "It's okay. It's okay. I just have to get it back under control, and everything will be fine."

The look on Lionel's face was a curious stew of frustration, disbelief, resignation, and something that Dipper had a sinking feeling was disappointment. Thankfully, though, he only asked, "Is there anything we can do that would help you?"

Dipper blinked, and blinked a few more times when the aura around his father's head didn't go away immediately. "No, I - I can - I'll be all right." He tried a smile, which seemed to do as much to convince Lionel that Dipper was really okay, honest, as Dipper's words had done. 

Lionel let out a long breath, his expression fading into a sad half-smile as he looked at Dipper. Dipper looked back down at the floor, studying the pattern of huge paisley swirls splashed across the carpet.

"I just have to get it back under control," he mumbled, to the mysterious dark spot on the carpet beside his right foot, clutching his left forearm with his right hand.

Lionel was silent for a long moment, before letting out a sigh and walking up to wrap an arm around Dipper's shoulders. "Let's head back to the room. After this morning, I think we could all use a chance to regroup."

Belle met them at the door, Waffles perched on her shoulders, prancing back and forth and occasionally fluttering up onto her head or doing loops in midair around her like he was so restless from being kept in the hotel kennels for a couple of hours that he couldn't sit still. "You guys gotta come see the news. It sounds like basically every beach in, like, a hundred miles is so packed with sea life there's almost no room for the water!"

They went in and watched the news. It was, as Belle had said, like basically every beach in a hundred miles was so packed with sea life there was almost no room for the water. The newsanchors kept referring very seriously and officially to weather and migration patterns, and attempting to interview marine biologists who just seemed ecstatic not to know anything about what was happening. After nearly fifteen minutes of excited people in plastic raincoats who couldn't explain what was going on, Lionel turned the TV off. "Well, it doesn't sound like the beach is in the cards for today. What do you two think about heading into the city?"

Belle and Dipper shared a look.

"It's only an hour's drive," Lionel continued. "We could visit the zoo, hit a museum or two, maybe catch a show on Broadway -"

"Are you kidding? Yes!" Belle yelled, loud enough to make Dipper's head throb and Waffles chirrup irritatedly. "Oh man, can we go shopping too? I need a new pair of sunglasses." The look she shot Dipper was pointed.

"I don't know how it happened, okay?"

"All right, new sunglasses are officially added to the list," Lionel sighed, with a fond but exasperated smile. "Well, it sounds like we have a plan. Go get dressed, you two."

Belle punched the air with one fist. "Yes! New York City, here we come!"

...

"New York City, here we go," Belle said sadly, kneeling on the backseat to watch out the rear window as the city lights retreated into the dark.

"Belle, put your seatbelt on," Lionel said, not taking his eyes from the steady stream of taillights in front of them.

Dipper settled back against the cool vinyl of the seat, slowly and rhythmically smoothing his fingers over the scruff of the teacup griffin asleep in his lap as he let his eyes sink closed. He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt so full, Waffles was a warm weight against his legs, and the whole car seemed suffused with a warm, contented glow. For once on this stupid vacation, he couldn't see it as an aura around Belle and Lionel despite trying not to, either.

Beside him, Belle slid down into her seat, quietly humming the finale from the musical they'd managed to get tickets to see, "Spring A-Bacon-ing". She stopped partway through the line about pork rinds to lean forward around the passenger seat. "Dad, can I get a pig?"

"What do you want a pig for? You've already got your hands full with the griffin you've got."

"Aww, but pigs have those snuffly pink snoots! And tiny little curly-wurly piggy tails!"

"Don't let Waffles hear you talking like that," Dipper said, shutting his eyes again. "He's already sitting in my lap. If you're not careful he'll start liking me best."

"What? No way, Waffles knows you're smelly. He just goes for the most convenient lap."

"Wha- hey! I have showered every day this week so far!"

Belle's peals of laughter were contagious, and after a moment, Dipper couldn't help but join in.

The low hum and buzz of the highway, the whoosh as cars sped past them, was like a quiet lullaby. At some point, Lionel turned on the radio, soft sounds of old transcore gently spilling into the cocoon of white noise cradling them.

Dipper wasn't sure when he fell asleep.

...

When Dipper woke up, it was with a blinding headache pounding on the inside of his skull.

He tried to sit up, and immediately fell back flat on his back in bed, groaning. The headache felt like it was bouncing around all over the inside of his head, hammering on his skull to try to get out. "Oooogh."

"What's up, broconut?" Belle asked, flopping down on the bed beside Dipper. The mattress bouncing under his head was like a sledgehammer slamming into his skull. He groaned.

"Dipperrrr! You gotta get up! The news said the beaches are still all ridiculously full of fish so Dad's taking us to a nerd museum today!" Belle gave a few more bounces on the bed for good measure. Dipper felt each one like a kick to the head. "It's got all kinds of physics experiments and hands-on exhibits and - and you're not leaping out of bed over this. Dipper? You feeling okay?"

Dipper moaned in answer and squeezed his eyes shut, tugging at the covers, trying to pull them up over his face to block the light.

"Da-ad, something's wrong with Dipper!" Belle called, in what must have been her best attempt at a hush. It still pounded echoes through the inside of Dipper's skull, but he had to appreciate the thought.

"No, Belle, don't -" Dipper had to pause and grit his teeth against another particularly vicious stab. "I don't want you guys to worry about me, I'll be fine."

“Last time you said that about a headache and we kept going to an educational tourist attraction, you threw up all down the side of the car,” Belle said flatly. 

“Okay, that was different!” Dipper winced, realizing too late that he was talking too loud for his own headache. “Owwww oh bad idea, bad idea.”

A shadow fell over Dipper’s face, his father leaning down over the bed, and a cool hand brushed his bangs away from his forehead. “What’s the matter?” Lionel’s voice said, and Dipper could have cried. “You do feel a little warm...I wonder if the concierge would have a thermometer?”

“I don’t have a fever, I’m just - ow - it’s just a headache. It’ll go away -”

“You’ve got the covers over your head,” Lionel said, matter-of-factly.

Dipper let out a long, low moan and tried to shuffle down farther into the bed.

In the end, it was past noon before they left the hotel. Dipper’s head was still throbbing every now and again, but even though Belle was putting on a good show of enjoying watching cooking shows, he could tell she was starting to get almost as squirrelly as Waffles was. And he wanted to see the museum at least as much as she did. Probably more. 

Thankfully, the further inland they went, the more his headache ebbed. Belle pointing out all the flocks of birds soaring past overhead stopped being so irritating, and he actually managed to get his head up to look out the window in time to see the phalanx of phoenixes that flamed past. Travel was slow, sometimes crawling to a stop, and at one point Dipper caught a glimpse of a cluster of deer up ahead in the middle of the road, one in the middle raising a head to fix him with three glowing eyes. They weren’t the only animals the Sterlings passed, or had to stop for, that were on their way inland.

“Do you think it’s because of the weather?” Belle asked, her face and both hands pressed against the window as she watched a group of policemen directing traffic around a manticore. 

Lionel cast an apprehensive look up into the rearview mirror, at the boiling clouds gathered low around the horizon. “You know, I’m almost grateful we’re not going to the beach today.”

By the time they got to the museum, the pain in Dipper’s head was almost manageable, though the odd throb would still stop him in his tracks. Dipper was almost grateful that his eyes had remained stubbornly demonic, so that he had to keep his borrowed sunglasses on. It was definitely too bright out for the pressure in his head, a cold thunderstorm glow that left everything a little hazy around the edges. The boiling clouds were just visible over the tops of the buildings, now, and Dipper found he had to agree with his dad. He was really happy they were going to be spending the day inside.

The museum was a big, silver building in the middle of the old downtown, looking like an alien spaceship that had just landed in the middle of all the leafy trees lining the streets full of brick and stone. It appeared to be a squat cylinder that some giant hand had gripped the top of and twisted, with a spiraling covered staircase wrapping around the outside. Shimmering rainbow holographic letters announced it as the Hector Trymore Space & Science Centre. 

“It’s so shiny,” Belle whispered, gazing up in apparent awe. 

“It’s also bigger on the inside,” Lionel said, in the tone of a tour guide who spent plenty of time touring the place on their own time too. “It took five years to perfect the spellwork for it, it hadn’t ever been done anywhere else before. It’s still one of only three buildings in the world with this particular architectural feature.”

“I remember that,” Dipper said, grinding his teeth as a particularly vicious throb ripped through his head, and both Belle and Lionel turned to look at him. “When they were working on that design. I...consulted on it. Bright kids.” He couldn’t help but laugh. “Not bright enough not to s- uh, consult me, though.”

Lionel huffed out a breath like he was trying not to laugh. “Should we go in and see this feat of magitectural engineering?”

There was a short line at the ticket booth, but it moved fast. The Sterlings got their hands stamped, and walked out into the main floor of the museum.

It was, as advertised, bigger on the inside.

Even having helped to come up with the plans to build the place, Dipper was a little awestruck. The ceiling arched impossibly far overhead, vaulted like a cathedral in shimmering brushed steel. Curved doorways lined the wide, circular room, each leading off into a hallway like spokes of a wheel. Each one had a different holo-label projected above it, declaring what lay on the other side. More halls branched off all the way around every floor, all the way up to the ceiling arches, delicate metal walkways circling the central room at each floor. One massive exhibit dominated the centre of the room, an enormous, perfectly round pool of water with a globe projected above it, different holo-labels flickering across its surface. As the Sterlings stepped through the entrance, a flock of silver hummingbirds whizzed by on their way to the giant crystal flowers hanging from the ceiling of the hall labeled ARBORETUM, passing through the globe as they did so and making more holographs shoot out from its surface, each covered in information and accompanied by a deep voice echoing magically out of space reading the information on each. 

A high-pitched whine made Dipper glance to his left, to see Belle with both hands pressed to her cheeks, her eyes almost as enormous as her smile. “Dad! You didn’t tell me it was so beautiful!” She sucked in a gasp of pure delight, squishing her hands against her cheeks. “Ohmigosh there’s an entire room about _rainbows!_  And Dipper! Look! There’s a Hall of Unsolved Mysteries!”

“Wait, really? Where?” 

Instead of pointing, Belle reached up to grab Dipper’s head, one hand over each ear, and turned it to point at the hall she’d noticed. 

“Oh! Oh, man - wait, is this the museum where they look at the scientific explanation for pre-Transcendence mysteries and confirm whether they were really magic-based or not? I saw part of a special on the Used To Be The Used To Be About History Channel about this place once!” Dipper started towards the doorway, and then stopped, glancing back at his family. 

“Go right on ahead, brother dear,” Belle said, waving in his direction with both hands. “I’m going to see the _rainbows!”_

_..._

Dipper was quietly snickering to himself over a display on the Beale ciphers (seriously? They’d decided those were a _hoax_? Oh man, humanity was really going to get a real shocker in a couple hundred years) when he felt it. The floor had been swaying slightly under his feet all afternoon, the occasional vertigo wobble of any tall building in a high enough wind, but this was something else. Something short, and sharp, that made him pitch forward almost into the glass in front of him.

Dipper caught his balance just in time for another shiver to run through the floor, like a ripple through a pond, making the floor buck under his feet. This time, it was accompanied by the sudden sensation of his skull cracking down the middle like he’d been struck with a hatchet. He grabbed the delicate railing in front of him, hanging on as the floor bounced and shook like it was trying to throw him down. Around him, he saw people looking around, like they’d heard something strange and were trying to place it.

His head was splitting.

It wasn’t until he saw the wide eyes of a small child fixed on him that Dipper realised it wasn’t a metaphor. His head was literally splitting, and now that he was paying attention, he could feel it peeling open, like a banana, revealing what was underneath. What was really there.

Dipper clapped both hands to his head, willing it closed again even though the stabbing, searing pain increased tenfold. How could this be happening _again_? He wasn’t bound into this form! He had full command of his powers! And this wasn’t Gravity Falls, it wasn’t like there was enough magic here to -

Oh.

Oh, no.

The floor of the hall jerked, went uncomfortably still, and then, slowly, started to wobble in a way that made Dipper suddenly incredibly aware that what was holding it up was mostly magic and a little bit of air resistance. He tried to stop the rush of knowledge, but it hammered itself into his skull regardless, bleeding out his ears in golden calligraphy, the equations and spellwork that had burrowed these tunnels into the clear air, and the forces now acting on and against them, the -

Dipper squeezed his eyes shut as well, trying to pack the knowledge back down inside his meatsa- into his head. This couldn’t be happening. There was absolutely _no reason_  for his powers to be going so haywire. He just had to - had to hold it together. This was supposed to be a nice, normal family vacation! 

The flood of knowledge didn’t stop, barely even slowed, as Dipper turned away from the exhibit and made his way towards the mouth of the hall. He’d been tempting fate, coming in here in the first place where he’d already known he’d want to know the answers to every mystery, and now reams of information with an infinity of connections trailing from every point were trying to cram themselves into his tiny, fragile construct of a human brain. No wonder his head had been hurting! It just wasn’t built to accommodate the entirety of his - 

Wait. His head had been hurting before they’d come to the museum, though. 

The realisation struck him at the same time as a particularly vicious buck from the floor threw him onto his butt. Dipper tried to clutch at his head and his tailbone at the same time, barely able to hear the screams and shouts from around him over the pounding in his head as it tried, again, to split. A replica Rosetta Stone slammed into the floor just beside his foot, and it took Dipper nearly a full minute to realise that it hadn’t just shattered on impact - its bottom half was missing because it had gone right through the carpet, and was still sinking.

Around him, the yells and shouts took on a panicked edge, and another pounding joined the one in Dipper’s head as people ran past him, heading for the exit into the main building. Their feet left huge dents in the floor of the hall, like they were running through sand. Dipper could feel, under his fingers, the magic that held the hall together starting to deform and ebb away. He curled both hands into fists and pushed himself to his feet, careful not to be knocked down again. It’d suck to get this body trampled when he was working so hard to stay in it.

There was a roaring in his ears as he joined the stampede for the exit, and it wasn’t until they flowed out into the main hall that Dipper realised it wasn’t just in his ears. The high arched ceiling of the main room was swaying like seaweed in a vicious tide, the creaks and groans of its straining metal panels trying to cling to each other by the barest of rivets and the finest traces of sigils blurring into a loud, low moan that almost drowned the rising sounds of sirens and panic filling the dome. People were spilling out into the main room on every level, and though it was hard to tell, the other halls all looked like they were starting to suffer the same way the Hall of Unsolved Mysteries had. 

A shard of pure panic lodged itself in the back of Dipper’s throat. He scanned the crowd even as he was buffeted along in its wake, hardly caring when he felt something hot and wet drip down his face and knew he’d melted his sunglasses off again. Human eyes wouldn’t have been able to pick Belle and Lionel out in this crush, anyway. Hadn’t Belle said she’d be in the Hall of Illusions looking at the rainbows? He couldn’t catch even a glimpse of her bright jacket or the gleam of light off of Lionel’s bald head. 

There was an enormous _thump_ , and the shaking metal walkway suddenly went very still under Dipper’s feet. A hush fell over the hall, the blaring sirens loud and eerie in the quiet as all eyes turned upwards to the arched ceiling, which seemed to have stilled. Dipper hadn’t realised how much its dull moan had filled all the available sonic space until it suddenly stopped. The roaring was louder now, like a high wind whipping against the building, and Dipper suddenly remembered the tropical storm that had been moving in along the coast. But that didn’t explain the melting hallways, this building had been designed with coastal weather in mind, even a fully-blown hurricane couldn’t have touched the magic holding them up -

Dipper’s train of thought, already fragmented by the pressure building inside his skull, was entirely derailed by a sudden shriek of metal from above. High overhead, the dome of the ceiling started to flicker, shifting rapidly back and forth between the arched cathedral ceiling storeys and storeys up and a flat expanse of insulation and steel girders much lower down. As Dipper watched, the flickering sped up, until trying to see each image individually made even his eyes cross and a high, ominous whine start to build in his ears. 

He turned his attention away from the ceiling as the crowd started to move around him again. Dipper tried to push back against the rush towards the nearest exit, to head back towards the centre of the hall. He still didn’t know where his family were, and it didn’t really matter if he got out if they were still stuck in one of the halls and it collapsed. He didn’t make much headway, though, buffetted back and forth by people rushing to leave, and every time he thought the floor was starting to clear and he’d have a chance to move forward, another wave of people would pour down from the walkways above. In all the confusion, Dipper’s shouts for his father and sister went unheard. 

Well, this _had_  been a nice, normal family vacation.

Dipper found a wall to press himself flat against, shutting his eyes to at least try to concentrate through the cacophony of people yelling and metal under stress by shutting out the sight of people rushing by him, the dome flickering overhead, the random bursts of light and colour as the failing magic in the halls demolished various exhibits in ways that would probably be really cool to watch if he and his family weren’t separated in the middle of a collapsing building. He tried to let just a trickle of the vast enormity of his knowledge flow through his little human brain, just enough to know where in the crowd Belle and Lionel were, whether they’d already made it safely out - 

Information flooded him, like a dam bursting and washing away an entire city in its path. Dipper Knew suddenly that approximately 2% of the people here today wouldn’t survive the now-inevitable collapse of the building, that that collapse could have been reversed about three and a half minutes ago but only by a focused discharge of magic that only a circle of mages all at level twelve or higher could achieve, that the damage had now progressed too far and there was nothing that could be done to save the building, that the height of the dome made it a perfect target for lightning, which was even now preparing to strike, but only on the _inside -_

Dipper clapped both hands to his head, feeling proteins streaming past under his fingers as his human guise started to disintegrate like the spellwork holding up the science centre had. With an enormous heave, he managed somehow to slam the brakes back on the flood of knowledge ripping through him, to fix his body back into solidity. Everything ached by the time he’d pulled himself back together, from his back teeth to the tips of his hair, but he was solid. He was human - or, at least, human-adjacent. He wasn’t going to spark off a mass panic that would lead to even more people getting crushed in the crowd and the building collapse by suddenly turning into Alcor the Dreambender in front of everyone. He - he still had no idea where Belle and Lionel were.

“Dipper!”

It was pure chance that Dipper heard the shout. He opened his eyes, straightening up from where he’d slouched against the wall, and had to will his feet back into contact with the ground. From somewhere to his left, a hand covered in rainbow bangles waved frantically in his direction over the heads of the crowd.

Dipper breathed a long sigh of relief, before pushing into the crowd. He caught an elbow to the face as he tried to work his way in towards Belle, but he barely noticed it. It felt like his entire body was exploding in slow motion, a little human interference wasn’t going to make much of a difference.

Belle, however, noticed immediately. “Dipper, you’re bleeding! Are you okay? What’s going on?”

Dipper wiped a hand under his nose, cursing under his breath when it came away covered in liquid gold. “I’m fine, nothing I can’t handle. And I don’t know what’s going on, something about the storm is wrecking the place. Where’s Dad?”

“He went back to the car to grab me a water bottle just before the halls started shaking, I hope he’s still out there.” Belle squinted at Dipper. “Are you sure you’re okay? You look a little...blurry.”

“I told you I’m fine, it doesn’t matter. Let’s just get out of here before -”

The hum that had been slowly and steadily building since the ceiling had started to flicker suddenly reached an eardrum-piercing crescendo, and lightning struck.

It wasn’t an ordinary lightning strike. The science centre was only about three storeys high, on the outside, where the storm had been curling around it, trying to find a way in to the towering high-rise that was somehow inside. Electrical charge had been building and building, unable to find a foothold for release. But now, with the magic holding the building together rapidly melting away, stripped like in a high wind, what was inside the tower was finally, _finally_  flickering into the world outside as well.

Lightning slammed into the building at every level at once, a river of pent-up electricity all leaping at once from sky to science centre in one triumphant, vindictive bolt, and blew the roof off.

Dipper flung out a hand and Belle grabbed it as the crowd surged forward, the screams and sirens rising to fill the building all but drowned out in the enormous wall of sound that was the thunderclap following the strike. There was an enormous splash as a chunk of ceiling plummeted through the holo-globe and into the central pool behind them, and a chorus of magically-amplified deep voices rose over the pandemonium, reciting a series of fun, educational facts over the roar of the stampede. Rain and wind howled in through the now-open ceiling, whipping against their faces and tearing at their clothes.

It felt like a lifetime before Dipper and Belle were squeezed up against the doors, and then pushing out, stumbling into the teeth of the storm. Dipper couldn’t feel his fingers clinging to Belle’s arm, but they were, and it showed just how scared she was that she was holding his just as tightly. 

They peeled off from the crowd as it splintered away from the doors, still clinging to each other as they made their way out to the parking lot. Dipper kept his eyes fixed on the car, the knowledge of what was happening to each structural component of the building still rattling in his head, the death toll knocking at the inside of his skull. He didn’t need to see it fall. 

Away from the crowd, the wind found its way in through every gap and crack of their clothing, blasting them with bursts of freezing cold and howling like something in pain. The rain that lashed at them was like a swarm of stinging hornets, droplets that felt more like shards of glass being flung by the angry wind, and it was hard to keep their balance and keep moving.

“What is this, a hurricane?” Belle yelled, and Dipper barely caught her words.

“That tropical storm must have made landfall! We should get back to the hotel and -”

Belle’s hand suddenly squeezed like a vise around Dipper’s upper arm, and he had to concentrate hard to keep the whole thing from bursting like a balloon under pressure. “Dipper! We left Waffles at the hotel! Oh no, poor little guy, I bet he’s so scared...”

“Belle, we haven’t found our _dad_  yet. I’m sure Waffles will be fine until we get back to the _oooogh.”_

“Dipper?” Belle stopped as Dipper doubled over, dropping to his knees with his hands clutched over his ears. “Hey, what’s going on?”

Dipper couldn’t answer her. He wasn’t sure what had happened or why, but suddenly trying to hold his body together was like trying to squeeze the entire storm down into a bottle. It was as though the headache he’d been suffering all day had somehow expanded to fill every inch of him, hammering on him from the inside out and trying to squeeze its way out of him any way it could. The wind and the rain and the cold, the sirens from the ruined building behind them and the rising sirens of emergency vehicles pulling into the parking lot, the sound of Belle’s words of concern, all fell away under the sheer concentration it took to hold himself together. 

And Dipper could feel already that he was losing anyway. Like the magic holding the science centre up had somehow been stripped away by the howling wind, his human appearance was all peeling away, and all of his power was only making it worse. The more he exerted on trying to hold himself together, the more it pushed out, leaking out of his constructed body from every pore.

“-per! _Dipper_!” Belle’s hands were on his shoulders, solid and real and giving him a rough shake. “Hey! Look at me!”

Dipper managed to raise his head, to meet Belle’s eyes, seeing only worry reflected there. Well, worry, and his own face, stained gold. He could feel, now, something warm and wet on his cheeks, and when he raised a hand to brush under his eyes they came away dripping in gold. 

“What is going _on_  here?” Belle asked, both hands tightening on Dipper’s shoulders. 

Dipper took a breath, and then another, fighting against the urge to just disintegrate. Even though the irresistible force that had been shredding him from the inside was starting to ebb away, giving him a chance to catch his breath, he knew it wouldn’t be long before it was back. “It’s a magic storm, Belle. That’s why it messed with the science centre so badly. I never considered - We’ve gotta find Dad.” He pushed himself, slowly, to his feet, biting down on his tongue to keep from letting out a scream at the ache in every joint, every muscle, and also to keep said tongue from splitting into a fork. “This is only gonna get worse.”

“Oh no you don’t, mister, you are bleeding gold out of your _eyes_ ,” Belle said, firmly. “You stay here, I’ll go find Dad and the car, and then we’ll all go back to the hotel and get Waffles!” 

“Belle, that’s what I’m saying! The hotel won’t be safe -”

“Pish tosh, you worry wayyy too much.” Belle gave Dipper a pat on the shoulder, gently pushing him back down to sit on the curb. “They’ve got the lighthouse all enspelled, remember? There’s a protective shield around this whole coastline anchored on that thing. And it’s been there for hundreds and hundreds of years, it’s not going to get blown over by one little storm. We’ll be fine.”

Dipper bit the inside of his lip. Logically, he knew that Belle was right, and it did make him feel a little better. But he couldn’t help the crawling feeling that ran through him at the words, ‘We’ll be fine’. 

“Okay,” he finally managed. “Just - hurry, please?”

...

The car was eerily quiet in contrast to the howls of the wind and rain outside, the blare of emergency sirens and car horns, shouts from angry motorists. Dipper lay stretched out across the back seat, focusing on counting each little nub in the carpet on the ceiling instead of the pressure that seemed to be building inside, threatening to tear his human form to bits with every breath, every heartbeat. Every time they hit a bump or a pothole he ground his back teeth together and dug his fingers into the seat beneath him. He’d have to remember to fix any damage done by inadvertent claws when he could safely use his powers again without going to pieces.

The ride back to the hotel seemed to take an eternity, wind blowing them off course, crashes in the lane ahead slowing and sometimes stalling them altogether. Lionel seemed afraid to step on the gas when they did have a clear shot, as well, crawling along and pausing every few seconds to shoot a glance back over his shoulder into the backseat. Dipper eventually had to turn his face away. He’d tried his hardest to scrub the gold off, but it had a tendency to cling and he was too exhausted to put too much effort into it. Just keeping himself together was hard enough.

So he barely noticed when the car slowed, and slowed, until it finally came to a complete halt.

The rain lashing at the windows made them nearly impossible to see through, and the moaning wind smothered most of the sounds from outside. Dipper couldn’t tell what had caused them to stop; at first, he thought maybe they’d arrived at the hotel, but the longer the car sat still and idling, the more he started to think that something had gone wrong. 

It took an almost superhuman effort to push himself up in the seat, until he could look between the two front seats and out the windshield. Dipper had to take a moment to remember to have a larynx before he could ask, “What’s going on? Why’d we stop?”

“I’m not sure,” Lionel said, peering out through the tiny, rapidly-vanishing patch of glass the windshield wipers, working at full speed and still moving too slowly, managed to clear. “There’s something in the road up ahead, I think.”

Belle pressed the side of her face flat against the passenger side window, craning her neck to try to see around the line of blurry taillights in front of them. “I don’t see anything. Just cars and more cars. Oh! And some more cars!”

Dipper let out a groan and slumped back into the backseat, taking care to make sure his head actually landed on the seat behind him.

Lionel leaned forward, fiddling with the radio. Static filled the tense quiet of the car, before a soft voice cut through the hiss. “ - flash flooding under the overpass. Drivers are advised to find alternate routes. No evacuation order has currently been issued, but residents are encouraged to take shelter -”

The voice dissolved into static again, setting Dipper’s back teeth buzzing as it grew louder and louder. Belle reached over and snapped the radio off.

“Did you hear where that was?” Lionel asked, and Belle shrugged.

“If it’s up ahead there, it’d explain why we haven’t moved in -” She leaned over, peering at the clock on the dash. “Nine and a half minutes.”

“Are those red lights up there emergency personnel, or just someone’s four-way flashers?”

“I think that’s actually a firepit of salamanders, Dad.”

Dipper let the conversation wash over him, shutting his eyes and taking deep, deliberate breaths, trying to remember what lungs felt like pumping in his chest. The car smelled faintly of old books and sprinkles, with an occasional burst of griffin feathers from the rattling heater, accompanied by a smell like a parakeet only gamier. The rain outside filled the car with wafts of salt and cold, and every so often Dipper could taste the tang of magic bleeding through.

He was just starting to settle back into the rhythm of his pulse when his head exploded.

Dipper flung both hands up to either side of his head, trying to physically hold it together so he could pin it back into shape. It took a few tries to get his hands in contact with his hair, and not the slick squish of brain or the smoothness of bare bone or the nothingness of the mindscape.

He had to reconstruct his ears from the inside out to be able to hear the panic in Belle’s voice, the rising chorus of frightened voices and increasingly urgent car horns from outside. It was easier to just taste the rising confusion and fear permeating the multitude of auras crammed in close around them, and that was exactly why Dipper tried not to. He was _human_ , for this week at least, and if he was going to make it through this, he had to remember that. 

He felt his toes starting to fray and ground his teeth as he forced them back into existence. Human. Normal.

“Oh my god, what _is_  that?” Belle said, her voice rising quickly through several octaves as she pressed her face up against the passenger side window so close her nose squished flat against the glass.

Lionel leaned over, peering over her shoulder out into the rain. He stared, and then adjusted his glasses, staring harder. “What is what?”

“Out in the bay! Is that -”

“Storm swell,” Lionel said steadily, but his aura was a brilliant vinegary orange and it filtered throughout the car. “It’s normal, in this kind of storm -”

“That doesn’t look like storm swell,” Belle said, too fast, drumming her fingers against the glass. “It’s way too big and it’s moving too fast. Dipper? Don’t you think that big black hump in the water is moving _way_  too fast?”

Dipper tried to push himself up to look out the window, not to simply see what was out there and know what was coming, not to let the power out. He ended up flopping back against the seat, exhausted, figuring one out of three couldn’t be so bad. 

“Dipper?”

Dipper thought his eyes were shut. He was pretty sure he still had them.

Belle started to say his name again, but she was cut short by a sharp intake of breath. “You’re right,” Lionel said, breathlessly. “You’re right, there’s something - something’s coming out.”

Even with his eyes shut or possibly nonexistent, Dipper could see the soft pink glow that suffused the rainy air. 

Belle and Lionel were both silent for a long, long moment. The pink pulsed, slowly, against Dipper’s eyelids as the silence pressed down on him, heavier than the gravity he had to keep remembering to obey. 

“What is it?” Belle said, finally, and Dipper exhaled, slowly, in time with the pink pulse. He risked opening his eyes, gingerly trying again to push himself up to steal a glimpse out of the window before he slid back down again. All he saw was a light, huge and round and pink, hovering just off the beach under the sweep of the lighthouse’s beam, reflecting off the water and filling the clouds with its glow.

“I’m not certain,” Lionel said. “Look, it almost looks like it’s coming in closer to shore.”

Dipper licked his lips, fixing the ideas of tongue and teeth in position before he croaked out, “Angler.”

Another moment of quiet passed, before Belle and Lionel both spoke at the same time.

“Dipper? Did you say -”

“What, like the fish?”

There was another pause, and Dipper tried to swallow past the total dryness in his mouth to get the words out before the whole complicated system of human speech got to be too much to hold together or one of them interrupted again. “Yeah. Magic storm drew it up. The light’s - a lure.”

There was a heavy note in Lionel’s voice as he asked, “Just what, exactly, is it trying to attract?”

“Dad! Dad, it’s coming out of the water!”

Dipper let larynx and esophagus collapse in favour of muscle and bone to pick himself up and turn around, vitreous humours and corneas to look out through eyeballs at the thing hauling itself out of the ocean. It was massive, at least three storeys of craggy, jagged teeth and spines, nearly all mouth with its back dotted with the enormous, milky globes of popping eyes. The pink light dangled from a long, thin tendril fixed in the centre of its back, swaying back and forth dizzyingly in front of its cavernous mouth as it dragged itself up the beach on thousands of little skittering crab-legs.

“ _Ew_ ,” Belle said, sounding about ten seconds from bursting into hysterical laughter. “Well, whatever it’s trying to attract, it sure isn’t us.”

Out on the beach, the pink light of the lure pulsed, once, and another wave of pressure swept over Dipper. He unclenched his fingers from the door handle he’d gripped, and tried to pretend he didn’t notice how mangled it was.

The thing out on the beach - the anglerdemon, the siren, the curse of a thousand sea stories - flopped around on its massive expanse of belly. Dipper thought it almost looked confused.

Another pulse of pink light bathed the beach, and Dipper slipped forward, his forehead falling through the glass for a moment before he caught himself. The thing on the beach thrashed, whipping its lure back and forth, and then went still, in a brooding, quiet way that Dipper didn’t like at all.

“Okay. Can we get out of here _now_?” Belle asked, settling back into her seat. “Like, now. Now now now!”

“Traffic’s still not moving, Belle -”

“Do _you_  want to be here when that thing crawls up off the beach to wreak a trail of havoc and destruction through the city?”

Dipper couldn’t tear his eyes from the soft glow of the lure, dim now through the lashing rain. There was something in the pale red of its glare, something in the way it bled hypnotically from bright to dark, that made him instantly understand Belle’s eagerness to get away. The anglerdemon didn’t exactly have what Dipper would call a ‘face’, but there was something frustrated in its motionlessness, something thoughtful and a little too intelligent for comfort.

The milky eyes dotting its back were hard to see through the fog of rain battering against the car, but Dipper could swear he saw them all roll in his direction and hold him fixed for a moment before they spun away, up into the fog and the clouds. Up towards the other bright beacon standing on the beach, lighting up the clouds from within.

Even without the help of his omniscience, Dipper could see what was coming. But he couldn’t do anything but watch, desperately clinging to his own bones, as the anglerdemon rose up like a gigantic segmented worm and slammed itself down on the lighthouse.

The white light vanished.

The brunt of the storm’s power, the magical force that had gathered in front of it all the way up the coast only to run up against the protective barrier anchored in the lighthouse, hovered for a split second before crashing down on the coast like an invisible tsunami.

Deep down, Dipper felt something go  _crack_.

His heart burst, his bones fractured, his spine exploding out through his ribs. His eyeballs and teeth melted out of his skull, his intestines splintering as his skin shredded. Raw power poured into him, filling him from toes to tips of his ears like champagne, and kept pouring and pouring until his human form split at the seams. Dipper desperately tried to pull himself together, but only succeeded in giving himself enough of a nervous system to feel every instant of his own disintegration.

He heard the echoes of his own screaming from the mindscape and was momentarily embarrassed for himself before the agony distracted him again.

Pink light filled the world, slow as a blooming fireball, and for the briefest of instants, all of Dipper’s pain and worry and fear vanished, smothered in a wave of wellbeing and contentment. It lasted for all of a fraction of a second before everything went white in front of his eyes as the pain slammed back. It took him a minute before he was able to process anything outside himself, but when he finally managed to throw up a cracked shell of an illusion of humanity around himself, the car was eerily quiet.

Actually, everything was eerily quiet.

Dipper couldn’t move, couldn’t look out the window, without shattering his flimsy soap-bubble of a human self, but he couldn’t help but feel the cloud of auras crowded around him. And what he felt was more frightening than the flood of magic, more terrifying than the force of the storm.

All the way up the road, all along the beach, every orangey-yellow-green sickly stain of fear had vanished, obliterated in a wave of sticky, suffocating pink.

It took an enormous amount of effort, and Dipper thought, for a few seconds, that he wasn’t going to manage it, that he was going to burst into eiderdown and dandelion fluff just for trying, but he managed to ask, “Dad? Belle?”

There was no answer from the front seat.

“Belle?”

Faintly, Dipper realised that the cloud of auras wasn’t as still as it had seemed. Slowly but surely, it was starting to move, breaking up as people spilled out of their cars and into the street. 

A stab of fear shot through him, and Dipper tried to get up, to check and see if his family were still in the car, but at the slightest movement he felt his head spinning across seven dimensions while his ribs uncurled and his intestines unspooled around him. He stopped moving, gathering himself together again, desperately trying not to rip himself apart.

There was a sharp sound of metal on pavement, and a gust of wind tore into the car, throwing rain into Dipper’s face. He only felt it vaguely, like a memory of cold. 

“We should go down to the beach,” Belle said, and her dreamy, mellow tone was so _wrong wrong wrong_  that Dipper only just managed not to scream, knowing he’d pop their tires and shred Belle’s and Lionel’s eardrums with his voice. “That’s why we’re here, right?”

“That sounds like an excellent idea,” Lionel answered, and that same unconcerned, carefree calmness seemed to have stolen through his voice as well. Dipper only just managed to choke down a sob. It had to be the lure of the demon on the beach - now that nothing was holding back the magic the storm had gathered, nothing was blocking the anglerdemon’s power either. He could remember the way the pinkness has wrapped around his own brain and turned everything soft and contented. It was probably only because that brain was slowly dripping out of his ear onto the carseat that he wasn’t agreeing to go down to the beach with Belle and his father and every other person stuck along this stretch of highway. Maybe even every other person in the city. Who knew how far that lure could reach?

He had to do something - he was probably the only person who could. But if he did - 

“Better if they’re around to _be_ disappointed in me,” Dipper muttered to himself, and pushed himself up from the seat.

He knew as soon as he did that he’d just made a fatal mistake. The body he’d cobbled together out of spare elements and strung together out of sheer stubbornness, already strained to its absolute limits, already tattered into only the vaguest approximation of humanity, warped and twisted around Dipper and finally gave in. 

Dipper heaved onto his sneakers, and was unfortunately unsurprised to see part of his own lung squish onto the carpet at his feet, slithering away under the driver’s seat. It was quickly followed by what looked like a partially-digested stomach and a few ropes of intestine. Gold streamed out of his mouth, his nose, his eyes, filling his vision for a moment as what had passed for insides heaved out of him, his body collapsing once and for all from the inside out, liquefied by the sheer inhumanity of what it was being forced to contain. 

He had to get out of this body before it collapsed completely - just like with the museum, he Knew now that he’d passed any hope of reversing the implosion. But something held him in place, retching and shaking on the backseat of the car, even as sinister warm pinkness flooded the world.

“Dipper, are you coming? ...Dipper?”

It wasn’t Belle. Dipper was dully surprised to hear his father’s - Lionel’s voice instead, sounding like a man abruptly woken in the middle of a dream trying to figure out if the dream had actually ended. 

Dipper tried to respond, but all he could muster was a moan.

There was a shuffling sound, and then two warm, broad hands on Dipper’s shoulders, holding him upright, a concerned face filling his vision. Dipper tried to focus, but his eyes strained and failed anyway, the longish whitish shape in front of him little more than a worried blur. He pressed both hands over his mouth to try to keep from heaving gore onto Lionel, and only managed to knock his own ring finger off when a bloody mass that he could barely identify as an organ came up anyway.

“What’s the matter? What’s wrong?” Lionel was saying, but Dipper just slouched forward gratefully, burying his face in his father’s overcoat and breathing in the must of old books and the warm glow of coffee. It smelled like childhood, or at least childhood this time around, and Dipper took the biggest breath he could manage, trying to remember what it had felt like to be just a human kid again, before he’d known what was hidden under his skin. Trying to remember what he was trying to pretend to be and why. 

He’d even been getting it right this time around. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair...

“Dipper? Hey, what’s the matter with him?” Belle’s panicked voice cut through the low background static fuzz of the anglerdemon’s lure, sharp and high and fast. “Oh my god is that blood? _Dipper!_ ”

Dipper tried to tell Belle that he was fine, but all that came out was a warm wave of gold, bubbling over his lips and all down the front of Lionel’s coat. “ ‘m sorry -” he managed, before another wave of gold spilled out and he choked.

“What - you don’t have to be _sorry_ , you big dope, you’re _hurt_  -”

Across the intervening space, Dipper could feel the anglerdemon’s sight roll towards their car, the one island of chalky green and vinegar orange in the sea of cough-syrup pink. He pressed his hands to his head, but it didn’t help as another wave of soothing, hypnotic magic burst gently over them. 

It was like swallowing a live explosive. This time, Dipper couldn’t hold back the scream.

The roof cracked, the rain pouring in. Dimly, Dipper thought he could feel the asphalt cracking under them as well, the ground gaping beneath them, the rumblings stopping many of the others staggering towards the beach in their tracks. Dipper tried to tuck his wings back inside the fragments of his rapidly-decaying human form, but only succeeded in putting out the back window with his flailing.

“Dad, I can’t believe you! This is all your fault!” Belle wailed, over the shrieks of the wind and Dipper’s bursting molecules. 

“What? Faybelle Carina Sterling, don’t you talk to me like that -”

“I mean it! Look! He said it was a magic storm!” Dipper was sure Belle had made some kind of extravagant hand gesture, but he couldn’t see it for gold blood and aura haze and the drip of his own vitreous humours into his line of sight. “This is just like when that cult summoned him back in Gravity Falls, only he’s trying to stay human because he thinks _you_  want him to!”

“He thinks I _what_?” Lionel’s hands on Dipper’s shoulders gripped more firmly, enough that Dipper worried they’d tear right through and he’d deflate like a balloon. “Dipper, is this true?”

Dipper coughed, trying to clear his mouth. “...wanted...normal...”

“Oh, my boy,” Lionel muttered, close to Dipper’s ear, and his hands on Dipper’s shoulders vanished. Just as Dipper had halfway expected. A sudden flash of furious anger at Belle tore through him, but drained away just as quickly. There was no way he would’ve been able to pull this off even if she hadn’t let his secret slip. He just wished she hadn’t said anything, had let Lionel go on thinking that Dipper was just doing this out of - spite, or carelessness, or secret demonic sadism, or any of the other things Mark and Anna had suspected him of. Anything but thinking it was _his_  fault. 

He wasn’t expecting to be suddenly gathered into a hug, his face pressed against his father’s shoulder smearing gold and red all down Lionel’s back. He really wasn’t expecting to be squeezed like a rag doll, tight enough to pull all of his dissolving atoms momentarily back together again.

“Dipper,” Lionel said, very low and serious in Dipper’s ear, “this is normal. For us. You are normal.”

Dipper pressed his face hard against his father’s shoulder, digging his remaining fingers into the back of Lionel’s overcoat. 

“I never - I only thought we all deserved a quiet family vacation without demon attacks, cults, or kidnappings, I didn’t mean - I didn’t mean _you.”_ His father drew in a long, shuddering breath. “And you don’t have to pretend for my sake. If trying to stay human is what’s hurting you, then please. Let it go.”

Dipper sniffled back a gush of gold, and wrapped both arms around his father’s waist.

His feet were the first to go, toes fraying away and dissolving into golden bubbles that burst without a trace when Belle poked them or they flew into an errant wing. Tiny golden brickwork traced itself across the surface of his skin, each brick peeling off and away in flashes of gold like confetti rising from a confetti cannon in slow motion. The mess he’d left across the backseat, the bits of organ and flesh that had been part of his human form, dissolved as well, until nothing was left of Dipper Sterling, fourteen, but a few claw marks in the vinyl of the seat cover. 

Alcor the Dreambender flexed his wings, and took a deep breath of the sickly-sweet magic filling the air.

“Better?” Lionel asked, and Dipper nodded into his shoulder.

“ I,̛ ̛u͡h. ̴I şhǫųld̸ p̧ro͜ba͞b͜l҉y͏ t̴a̸kę c̴arè ͜o҉f ţh̢is,̨” he apologised, pulling away from Lionel and bobbing his head in the direction of the monster on the beach, the trickles of people starting to make their way across the pale sand. 

His father only nodded in turn, a small smile crossing his face. Belle, on the other hand, threw herself forward and wrapped both arms around Dipper’s neck.

“You’re both stupid,” she proclaimed, giving Dipper a squeeze that, had he still been human, would most definitely have cut off his air supply.

“ O̴̷̴͡͝w̷̡̨͜ - Belle, choking -”

Belle gave another firm squeeze before she pulled back, to show that she knew full well that Dipper wasn’t actually choking and that she intended to hug Dipper to the fullest extent possible no matter what. “Go kick its scaly monster butt, Dip-dork.”

Dipper couldn’t help a smile of his own. “Hey, that wasn’t a very good nickname. You’re slipping.”

“So I’ll think of a better one by the time you get back!” She leaned over and gave him a swat on his shoulder with the flat of her hand. “Go on, get outta here!”

Dipper stole one last glance back at his father’s proud smile before giving his wings one powerful beat and soaring up through the crack in the roof.

...

It took barely a thought to put himself on the beach, hovering between the anglerdemon and its prey. The anglerdemon rolled its eyes towards Dipper when he arrived, the globes somehow even more repulsive close up, milky and sightless but with a suggestion of something obscene, some ancient and foul intelligence, drifting just under their surface, scrutinizing him with a deep and abiding hatred.

“ Oh ̵wow,̕ ̢ L̶ơv͟e̕cr̀a͠ft̵'͜s̵ ̷reàļl͏y ͞going͝ t͠o sue͘ ͟fo͟r c͝op͏ỳri̛ght v̡i̡ola̶t̢i͠on,” Dipper said, dodging out of the way as the anglerdemon snapped its enormous, spiny jaws at him. This close, he could see that the line of craggy teeth that jutted from the outside of the thing’s horrific mouth weren’t the only teeth it had; its entire throat was serrated, all the way to the back. “Ẁai͝t̷,̛ or͠ a͞r͟e͝ ̧hi͢s woŗkş ͝s͜till ́p̨ubli̢c d͠om͜ai͢n͠? ̧I ͢d͝oń'̢t r̢ememb͢e̴r h͘o͟w t̡hat̨ ̡wo͡rks ̛whe̷n͜ y̶ǫu ̸g͘e̴t͜ ̶zóm͡b̀i͡f̸i̛ȩd.”

The demon didn’t growl, which was almost more unnerving than if it had, Diper decided. Instead, it was eerily silent, swinging its lure back and forth hypnotically, still pumping out wave after sticky-sweet wave of contentment and calm and wellbeing.

“Cat go̡t your ͜ton͟g͠u҉e, ͟hu҉h?” Dipper teased, as he brewed up a fireball. “That's fine by me, the less time this takes, the better. I've got a n̶i͜c̶e͘,̨ ͟qu̶i̢et family ͠v̵a͟ca͞ti͠on ҉ to get back to.”

He lined up and fired the fireball right through the nearest of the anglerdemon’s eyes.

The eye burst, in a shower of black blood. The demon let out a howl like a thousand shipwrecked souls, thrashing so wildly that its lure nearly swatted Dipper out of the air. Dipper ducked around it, and it was only through pure luck that he noticed the anglerdemon rearing up like it had over the lighthouse, its pale white underbelly hovering over his head. 

Dipper blinked, and was suddenly hovering behind the anglerdemon, watching as it crashed bodily into the beach. Sand sprayed up around it, and a few people were knocked over, but Dipper payed them no attention. It was better if they were knocked over, anyway, they wouldn’t be able to come on as fast and the jolt might even disturb the anglerdemon’s spell.

Speaking of which, the lure dangling from the demon’s back was now throbbing a deep, angry red. Dipper could feel the magic that it used to hypnotise wrapping around him, thick and winding and sticky as cobweb. 

“T̶́͜h͜a͡͡t͘͡'̨s̴ n̵͏͘ơ̵t̢͢ g̀͞ǫ̷͝i̶͝n͝g͞͞ ͠t́o ẁ̵̡ork͏͘ ͞͠on̴ ̀͜me͡ a̕̕n̷y̧͠m͞o͏̡ŗ̡e͡ ,̶̵̵ “ he growled, as the demon skittered closer on its rows of tiny scuttling legs, its jaw working in apparent anticipation. “ I̸'͠͝m̸̵ ̸̕ņ̸̢o̢͞͠t ̕-͝ “

The lure passed in front of Dipper’s eyes, and for a moment, he saw it flash blue.

\- _warmth settled into his bones, and he blinked, and blinked again to get the sleep out of his eyes. He tried to push himself to his feet, but a heavy weight on his legs made it impossible._

_Dipper looked down to find Mabel’s head resting on his legs, both arms splayed out, a packet of Smile Dip in one hand and a tube of glitter glue in the other. He felt his face automatically, peeling off a ridge of glitter glue from just above his left eyebrow and smiling fondly at his twin sprawled across the other end of the couch._

_The TV was still on, spilling black and white images into the quiet of the basement, casting both Dipper and Mabel in a bluish glow. Organ music pumped out of the old TV set just on the edge of hearing, the volume turned way down so that it wouldn’t wake Mom and Dad upst-_

_\- Mom and Dad -_

\- _wait_  -  

Dipper shook his head, brushing aside the strangling strands of hypnotism that tangled his limbs and wrapped around his throat. He stared down the rows upon rows of serrated teeth lining the anglerdemon’s throat as its mouth yawed wide, in anticipation of devouring a Dipper-shaped morsel.

“O̴͏h̕ ̀͏n̢o ̷͟ý̶o̴̢u̧ ̡͠d́͞͠on'̵̴͡t̢,̶̧” Dipper snarled. “I’m not falling for that. Right now, my family is r̵͘i̸g̷̕͡ht͠ ̡̧h̸́e͝͏͟r̶̢e͘.̴͟”

He wound up and hurled another fireball, the biggest one he could muster, straight down the anglerdemon’s throat.

The anglerdemon’s jaw snapped closed.

...

The hotel, when they finally dragged themselves in the doors, somehow did not appear to have been evacuated, but the smiles of the staff all looked a little stretched and stiff, and the television screens around the lobby were all tuned to the weather channel.

“How about that beautiful Atlantic weather, huh?” the clerk at the check-in desk asked jokingly as they stopped, before his eyes turned to Dipper and his smile faded. “Are you all right? Do you need me to call for an ambulance, get you first aid -”

“Actually, we’re here to pick up my daughter’s teacup griffin,” Lionel said, as Dipper drew in a deep breath and tried to keep his eyes down, so the clerk wouldn’t notice how strange they looked. “We left him with your kennel...?”

“Oh, yes, of course! Mr...Waffles,” the clerk said, glancing down at something on the desk. “Apparently he’s been quite the handful this afternoon.” 

“I’ll pay for any damages,” Lionel said, in the same weary tone of voice he used when the school called home to say that Dipper was on the roof again or that Belle had somehow rigged all the faucets in the second-floor junior high girls’ bathroom to flow glitter. 

The clerk visibly took a deep breath, and his strained smile returned. “No, I don’t believe that will be necessary. We did manage to contain him. However, I will ask you for your help in retrieving said griffin.” His smile resembled more of a rictus as he said, “I’m certain it’s only the storm making your pet act this way, but I’d really prefer not to lose any more skin today.”

“Of course,” Lionel said. “Belle, would you -”

“Um, duh!” Belle eased Dipper’s arm up over her head. “Dad, have you got him?”

“Are you quite certain you’re all right, young man?” the clerk asked, looking directly at Dipper’s face, and Dipper squeezed his eyes shut, focusing on pulling together a working larynx.

“Fine. Just...” He waved a hand, a wave that was really more of a flop. “Magic sensitivity.”

A note of sympathy bled into the clerk’s voice. “Oh, I  _see_. Were you out there when the lighthouse came down? We had quite a fright in here, all of the cutlery and dishware the staff were setting out in the main ballroom for a conference tonight suddenly stood up and started singing and dancing. I suppose it’s better than being out on the beach when that monster exploded, though. Just this way, please, miss.”

He led Belle around behind the counter, leaving Dipper to slump against his father’s shoulder. Lionel shifted his grip to hold Dipper a little more firmly, to support him against his wobbly knees and liquid legs. He only had to pretend to be human for long enough to get up to the room again, Dipper told himself. Then he could be as demonic as he wanted. 

He might have drifted for a little while, concentrating as hard as he was on keeping his heart pumping and his lungs inflating and deflating (and keeping both of them inside the shell of his body), but Belle returned faster than Dipper had expected, Waffles clutched in a death grip against her chest, cooing soothing words into his ear. “Who’s a scared little baby griffin? Who’s a tiny little teacup terror? Whoooo ate the night manager’s spare tie? Seriously, did you do that? You’re gonna be sick all over the place, we’re gonna have to keep an eye on you, mister troublemaker!” She gave Waffles a little bounce, before turning back to the clerk. “Thank you so much! You guys treated him so nicely, we would definitely use your services again!”

The clerk looked like he was trying to smile, and failing.

The Sterlings made it up to the hotel room without further incident, Waffles trembling in Belle’s arms, Dipper leaning heavily on his father as he tried to remember that his feet had to move and were supposed to make contact with the ground. The door of their hotel room had barely closed behind them before Dipper cast a nervous glance up at Lionel. Lionel nodded, and Dipper exhaled, throwing off his human appearance like a heavy, cumbersome pile of blankets.

“Turn on the TV, see what they have to say about the storm,” Lionel said to Belle, who nodded and grabbed the remote. The huge screen across the back wall flickered to life, catching the meteorologist mid-sentence.

“- moving north towards Nova Scotia. This system should clear New York State by early Friday morning, just in time for the weekend. So if you’ve got fallen branches or debris or chunks of demon in your backyard, you’ll have plenty of time to clear that up before garbage pickup on Monday.”

“Thank you, Lakynn,” the news announcer said gravely, as the camera flicked back to him. “We now go live to Caritas Porter, who is on location in Sandy Hook, where what appears to be a giant anglerfish -”

The announcer fell silent as Belle pressed the mute button on the remote and turned to face her brother and her father. “So, what’s the verdict? Are we running back home, or are we gonna stick it out for one last swim?”

Dipper glanced down at Lionel from his perch hovering near the ceiling. Lionel returned his glance. 

“Well, what the heck,” Dipper said, and did a little midair backflip just for good measure. The flood of magic had started to ebb some, but he could still feel it crackling restlessly along the edges of his wings and between his fingers. “You guys up for giving this ‘quiet, normal family vacation’ thing one more shot?”


End file.
